Bulls Lurch To 13th Straight

Pippen`s 28 Pace Record-setting Win Over Cavs

December 05, 1991|By Melissa Isaacson.

If the Bulls played the best basketball in the league in winning 13 of their first 15 games and 12 in a row, then what they did to set two franchise records Wednesday night could only politely be characterized as carryover effect.

Nonetheless, their 108-102 victory over the Cleveland Cavaliers at the Stadium gave them the best start at 14-2 and the longest winning streak at 13 in the 26-year history of the club.

It also gave them yet one more way to stand out in this continuing postchampionship glow.

Despite pregame insistence in the Bulls` dressing room that the records, set in 1973, were secondary, coach Phil Jackson admitted to the contrary.

``It`s nice for these guys to be part of a team that set the record,`` he said. ``I think these guys want to be part of that, to make them ours.``

Scottie Pippen, showing no effects of the flu attack that kept him out of practice Tuesday, led six Bulls in double-figure scoring. Pippen notched his first triple double of the season and fifth of his career with 28 points

(including 17 in the first half), 15 rebounds and 10 assists.

Michael Jordan, complaining of residual back stiffness from a sprain suffered Friday night at Portland, had a season-low output of 16 on 7-of-20 shooting, along with nine assists and seven turnovers.

It was just the second time this season that someone other than Jordan had led the team in scoring. Pippen was the leading scorer in a victory over Milwaukee on Nov. 15.

``It feels great to be a team,`` Jordan said. ``Scottie and Horace Grant

(who finished with 22 points and 10 rebounds in leading the Bulls to a whopping 55-33 advantage on the boards) really stepped up. Everybody stepped up tonight and throughout the season. That`s what this team is all about. It is the maturity and progress of this team that is bringing it all together.`` The Bulls expected to see a different Cleveland team Wednesday night, and, indeed, it is exactly what they saw after dominating the Cavs the last two seasons.

Ever since ``The Shot`` by Jordan propelled the Bulls past Cleveland in the decisive Game 5 of the first round of the Eastern Conference playoffs in 1989, the Bulls have won 10 consecutive regular-season meetings.

This was the team that shut out the Bulls that regular season, winning all six meetings, so the Bulls` 11-0 run was not exactly expected.

``This was beyond my wildest expectations,`` Jackson said, offering only familiarity as an explanation. ``You get used to division teams, to what they run and their philosophies. That has been our blessing, that we learned the team well.``

What they learned over the last two seasons, however, would not help them Wednesday night. Playing with a healthy lineup for the first time in two years, the Cavs certainly were a different team with Mark Price initiating the offense, a bulked-up Brad Daugherty muscling inside and Larry Nance and Craig Ehlo offering more than adequate support.

The Cavs (9-6) led by 11 in the first quarter and trailed by just three some four minutes into the fourth quarter before going cold for too long to allow for a comeback.

The Cavs would climb back within six with 2:38 left, but that was as close as they could get as the Bulls racked up the record-setting victory and snapped the Cavs` victory streak at five games.

It was not, however, without considerable struggle.

``It was one of those types of games with no rhythm to it,`` Grant said.

``One team never dominated the other, and that`s the type of game they wanted to lure us into.``

The weariness that somehow escaped the Bulls on their two-week, 6-0 sojourn in the West seemed to catch up with them in the first quarter.

Daughterty, a load in the middle at 7 feet and 263 pounds, had his way with Will Perdue, hitting four of his first five attempts for 10 of Cleveland`s first 14 points as the Cavs ran out to a 14-7 lead.

But strangely, Daugherty, who led the Cavs with 26 points, took only one shot for the rest of the quarter and three minutes into the second. With Scott Williams in at center and Will Perdue on the bench in the second, Daugherty attempted just two more in the half, making one and finishing with 14 points at intermission.

``We wanted to force him to the middle and double-team him,`` Stacey King said. ``Early on, he was getting easy baskets from the transition game.``

John Paxson, who has gotten off to a slow start offensively this season, was a key contributor in the second half, hitting four of six shots in the third quarter for nine points and finishing with 13.